Accepted guess Not a possible answer C tier for first-turn info

FUTON

FUTON is accepted as a guess but is not on the solver's possible-answer list.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈfuːtɒn//ˈfutɑn/

Noun

A thin mattress of tufted cotton or similar material, placed on a floor or on a raised, foldable frame as a bed.

Noun

A round cushion used for Zen meditation, traditionally made of woven bulrush leaves.

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

Etymology

Borrowed from Japanese 布団 (futon), in turn from Middle Chinese 蒲團 (MC bu dwan, “meditation cushion”) (compare Mandarin 蒲团 (pútuán)), from 蒲 (bu, “bulrush, cattail”) + 團 (dwan, “sphere, round object”) from the way the original cushion was round and made from woven bulrushes.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it FOOTAHN.

In a sentence

I'll sleep on the futon.
© tatoeba.org contributor Hybrid (CC BY 2.0 FR)
The futon was placed on the bed.
© tatoeba.org contributor terrywallwork (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use FUTON in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 90.1% of possible answers.

Wordle status

A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.

Playable guess

Yes

Included in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.

Possible answer

No

The solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.

Past Wordle answer

No completed appearance

No appearance in our globally completed history. A recent puzzle may still be live elsewhere.

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

How FUTON performs as a guess

Wordle accepts FUTON as a guess, but the solver does not list it as a possible answer.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 74.5% of games, misses completely in 25.5%, and leaves about 236 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,690 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.68 guesses in games solved within six turns.

Try your feedback pattern

Tap the tiles to match your feedback, then see the ranked follow-up guesses.

All gray? Tap a tile to cycle gray → yellow → green.

First-turn measures

All four describe FUTON used as an opening guess. Entropy is the same idea as “avg ruled out” on a log scale: a higher number means the guess splits the possible answers into more, smaller groups.

4.45 Entropy (bits)
236 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.1% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How FUTON performed in the previous complete opener benchmark, against its captured answer snapshot. These research figures are separate from today's solver recommendations. See the data page for the method.

3.68 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#5,690 Rank among openers
Opening with FUTON solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.68 average. It ranks #5,690 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
55
3 guesses
888
4 guesses
1,183
5 guesses
209
6 guesses
19

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
NOTU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
74%
Green tile
27%
All gray
26%

Feedback distribution

FUTON can come back 95 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

609 answers
244 answers
236 answers
167 answers
107 answers
82 answers
67 answers
63 answers
56 answers
54 answers
54 answers
45 answers
45 answers
38 answers
34 answers
29 answers
27 answers
27 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
13 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

Base letter-value totals for FUTON; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.

Scrabble

F4U1T1O1N1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.

Strategy after playing FUTON

What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to FUTON.

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing FUTON:

26% chance
Suggested:
CARLE
10% chance
Suggested:
SHARE
10% chance
Suggested:
DROLE

Follow-ups for common patterns

Ranked follow-up guesses for the 10 most common feedback patterns.

25.5% →
CARLE 6.22 bits
10.2% →
SHARE 5.78 bits
9.9% →
DROLE 5.24 bits
7.0% →
LAIDE 5.28 bits
4.5% →
SLYER 4.45 bits
3.4% →
CARSE 5.10 bits
2.8% →
SHARE 4.61 bits
2.6% →
CRINE 4.50 bits
2.3% →
CARLE 4.59 bits
2.3% →
SLIER 4.68 bits

Research on FUTON

Game-tree analysis and word research for FUTON, with an explanation for each figure.

Optimal play

Opening with FUTON, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.72 guesses and ranks #6,255 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.84 guesses at best and is rank #2,385 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.68, at or below the proven-optimal 3.72, because the two figures score different answer lists.

These figures come from exhaustive game-tree search and are exact for the NYT lists of July 2023 (3,158 answers). They do not use the site's working answer pool.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
FUTON sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.7 of 5).

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).